Public Reform Research Paper

It’s no secret that a majority Americans struggle with all things finances. The jargon alone is enough to leave many confused, and with the complexities of modern economy becoming an ever increasing tangled mess, Americans are looking to do something about it. One popular suggestion is financial literacy classes for high school students. While the idea sounds promising, the reality of these classes is rather farfetched. People praise the thought of implementing financial literacy into our school system in order to help kids in their future. This praise is filled with good intentions, but the sad fact is that this is not in a student's best interest.

Financial literacy should, without a doubt, be a requirement to graduate in every high school. Every year, thousands of high school students graduate and are forced into the real world with no knowledge of financial literacy. How could they be expected to succeed? High schools prepare students to find the perimeter of a garden, write in MLA format, and always keep their shirts tucked in, but fail to prepare students for loans,car notes, or taxes.

Opponents of teaching financial literacy may argue that it has a negligible impact on society, but that is not the truth. Knowing about financial literacy before college is ‘too important to ignore’(Frost,3). It’s crucial for making suitable financial decisions for the future and all of the students are going to use it in real life. In real life, students need to apply this knowledge

Financial literacy courses should absolutely be mandatory in the process of graduating from high school. It’s an essential piece to one's’ survival in life. It holds weight as far as its applicability to the real world, therefore abandoning the, “It doesn’t matter! I won’t ever have to use that in real life!” types of arguments.

The world we know revolves around two key essentials. In life, we can choose wisely to abide by the resources given or discard them. Understanding economics means you can understand the world. The power of money and knowledge leads to a future of success. In addition to success, life as we know becomes simple as we apply needed essentials that help escape from common struggles. In an effort to ensure financial success it is important that we pursue additional learning beyond our elementary experience, understand financial rankings and ensure the decisions we make will support us for a lifetime.

The conclusions aim to streamlining the delivery efforts of each financial education partner to capitalize on their strengths. First, the national platforms for personal finance education should focus less on curriculum development and more on improving the educational practices. It is difficult for standardized curriculums to be motivational locally. Instead, national programs should focus more effort to providing local educators with information on techniques to understand the natural education cycle and how to improve delivery. This focus would include items such as encouraging education for the individuals teaching financial education, focusing the education on client needs, and using feedback to assess and improve the education delivery and content.

The basic aspects of personal finance seem to be obvious to a fair number of people. However, due to the typical American education system, there are a vast majority of graduating high school students that enter the so-called ‘real world’ without having any practical knowledge on how to properly manage, spend, and invest the money they are hoping to make. The addition of a personal finance course, such as the one just taken over this summer session, to a standard high school curriculum would help assist future generations in enabling themselves to gain control over their finances, and would thus help the country as a whole by reducing the national debt.

The state of financial literacy in the North America is poor. Most surveys show that many people have trouble with topics requiring numeracy and a knowledge of how debt products and financial assets work. Survey results from the Jumpstart Coalition indicate that high school seniors are failing in the area of financial literacy; on average, students answered correctly on 58 percent, 52 percent, and 50 percent of questions given in 1997, 2000, and 2002 respectively. Adults scored slightly better but still missed some basic credit and insurance questions. African-Americans and Hispanics generally scored below the average. Repeated tests on students in subsequent

With the current state of the economy, it would be beneficial for students to take a personal finance course before the end of their secondary education. Already, there are many students who come in with no knowledge of how to manage their money. Without this knowledge, individuals are unable to develop those skills and are blindly pushed into the workforce and are unable to stretch their income to pay off their debts. Because individuals do not develop those skills they are also unable to budget their money effectively possibly causing many families who owe a lot of debt are unable to pay it back. It is more than possible it personal finance was a general education requirement knowing how to budget and reduce debt can make these situations

This article was all for making personal finance instruction a top concern. It was all about how many high schools are failing badly when it comes to teaching students about how to manage money and only 17 states require high school students to take courses in personal finance. Nan J. Morrison believes that for kids to be successful, they don’t need to learn advanced ideas. However she believes, students do need to know how to open a bank account and how much they need to save each month to reach their goals, she said. They also should know how much money they will need to earn to pay back the money they borrow. She believes that for kids to enter adulthood ready and prepared they should have to take personal finance making them aware of how to open a bank account and many other things you need to know to be a successful adult.

Starting financial educational programs early will help set the behavior of our youth as they move through life into

In recent times, there has been a new proclivity towards public sector reform around the world primarily driven by citizens, who are placing new demands on their governments for quality, efficiency, accountability, transparency and better service delivery. Today, globally, the success of any government is increasingly benchmarked based on social inclusion and citizens’ participation in governance.

Do you remember when we had our first job, and couldn’t wait for that first check? I remember mine. The money was all gone in 60 seconds, as I spent it all on things that didn’t really matter. We all wished we could’ve prevented that spending habit. I regret every penny that I lost, while I had no idea how to use money correctly. School districts need to focus on providing courses that will better prepare students for real life issues. Therefore, there should be a mandatory course on, 'Personal Finance’, in high School, because as they are struggling to figure out who they are as they are also oblivious to their own financial identity-status, they don’t know have the financial discipline from home, on understanding how to manage their money, and the most financial issues results to even academic failure. There are many ways to prepare these students for the real world and money.

Sadly, the problem is that parents, the expected and trusted source of that learning often don’t have the skills to pass it on to their children. That’s because they didn’t learn from their parents. In fact, a survey by the Networks Financial Institute found that less than 30 percent of American adults view their financial knowledge as very good (http://www.networksfinancialinstitute.org/thoughtleadership/publications/Pages/default.aspx). It gets worse. Another study by Dartmouth Prof. Annamaria Lusardi (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~alusardi/policy.html) found that only 18 percent of 1,700 adults in their early 50s could correctly answer a question about compound interest. And another survey for found that parents would rather talk to their kids about the birds and the bees rather than money management (http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/schwab/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&ndmConfigId=1010973&newsId=20080326005384&newsLang=en).

However, the educational system has changed to make it harder to receive an education almost as much as it has changed to make an education more accessible. Recent skyrockets in tuition have made paying for college a challenge. Even families in the middle class with six-digit incomes find it nearly impossible to pay for four years of college (What’s the Price Tag). This problem is compounded when families expect multiple children to attend college. America’s school system, especially at the tertiary level, needs to be improved in order for students to receive the education they deserve for the tuition they pay.